Hindalco Industries reported mixed quarterly results with a better-than-expected operational performance even as the net profit missed street estimates.
The Aditya Birla Group company posted a net profit of Rs 334 crore (on standalone basis) for the December quarter, down 23% y-o-y primarily due to higher effective tax rate for the quarter and lower contribution from other income.
Other income fell 36% y-o-y from R318 crore in the December quarter of last fiscal to Rs 204 crore in the third quarter of the current financial year. The company in the December quarter of last fiscal had reported a profit of R434 crore aided by one-time non-recurring income of R144 crore that did not come in the current fiscal third quarter. The company also saw its tax expenses rise 23.5% y-o-y to R134.73 crore as the efective tax rate increased by almost 860 bps y-o-y to 28.74% for the quarter.
The revenue from operations for the December quarter rose 5.85% y-o-y to R7,273 crore driven by higher volume. The company saw its revenues in the Aluminium segment going up by 11.6% y-o-y to R2,471 crore on back of higher volumes even as realisations were under pressure. The company produced 158 Kt of Aluminium for the quarter aided by production ramp up at its greenfield projects at Mahan and Utkal Alumina. The Mahan Smelter produced 18Kt of Aluminium metal, up from 7.4 Kt it produced in September quarter of current fiscal while the Utkal Alumina International saw its production going up from 41Kt in September 2013 quarter to 87 Kt in the December quarter.
The company saw revenues increase 33.5% y-o-y to R4,816 crore in the copper segment.
The stock of Hindalco closed the day down nearly 3.5% at R100.2 on BSE.
